CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

      He crossed the room and bowed before Violet.

      “My dear lady,” he said, “I have come to congratulate you. You have a clever husband—a little cleverer, even, than I thought. I have just had the misfortune to lose to him a bet of twenty-five thousand francs.”

      Violet smiled, a little uneasily.

      “Peter doesn’t gamble as a rule,” she remarked.

      Sogrange sighed.

      “This, alas, was no gamble!” he said. “He was betting upon certainties, but he won. Will you tell him from me, when you see him, that although I have not the money in my pocket at the moment, I shall pay my debts. Tell him that we are as careful to do that in France as we are to keep our word!”

      He bowed, and passed out with the shooting-party on to the terrace. Peter Ruff came up, a few minutes later, and his wife gave him the message.

      “I did that man an injustice,” Peter Ruff said with a sigh of relief. “I can’t explain now, dear. I’ll tell you all about it later in the day.”

      “There’s nothing wrong, is there?” she asked him, pleadingly.

      “On the contrary,” Peter Ruff declared, “everything is right. I have made friends with Dory, and I have won a thousand pounds. When we leave here, I am going to look out for that little estate in the country. If you come out with the lunch, dear, I want you to watch that man Hamilton’s coat. It’s exactly what I should like to wear myself at my own shooting parties. See if you can make a sketch of it when he isn’t looking.”

      Violet laughed.

      “I’ll try,” she promised.

      THE DOUBLE FOUR

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

       Recalled by The Double-Four

       Prince Albert’s Card Debts

       The Ambassador's Wife

       The Man from the Old Testament

       The First Shot

       The Seven Suppers of Andrea Korust

       Major Kosuth's Mission

       The Man Behind the Curtain

       The Ghosts of Havana Harbour

       The Affair of An Alien Society

       The Thirteenth Encounter

      RECALLED BY THE DOUBLE-FOUR

       Table of Contents

      First published in Pearson’s Magazine (US), Jan 1911

      It is the desire of Madame that you should join our circle here on Thursday evening next at ten o’clock.

      The man looked up from the sheet of note-paper which he held in his hand, and gazed through the open French-windows before which he was standing. It was a very pleasant and very peaceful prospect. There was his croquet lawn, smooth-shaven, the hoops neatly arranged, the chalk-mark firm and distinct upon the boundary. Beyond, the tennis court, the flower gardens, and, to the left, the walled fruit garden. A little farther away was the paddock and orchard, and a little farther still, the farm, which for the last four years had been the joy of his life. His meadows were yellow with buttercups; a thin line of willows showed where the brook wound its lazy way through the bottom fields. It was a home, this, in which a man could well lead a peaceful life, could dream away his days to the music of the west wind, the gurgling stream, the song of birds, and the low murmuring of insects. Peter Ruff stood like a man turned to stone, for, even as he looked, these things passed away from before his eyes, the roar of the world beat in his ears—the world of intrigue, of crime, the world where the strong man hewed his way to power, and the weaklings fell like corn before the sickle.

      “It is the desire of Madame!”

      Peter Ruff clenched his fists as he stood there. It was a message from a world every memory of which had been deliberately crushed, a world, indeed, in which he had seemed no longer to hold any place. Scarcely yet of middle age, well-preserved, upright, with neat figure dressed in the conventional tweeds and gaiters of an English country gentleman, he not only had loved his life, but he looked the part. He was Peter Ruff, Esquire, of Aynesford Manor, in the county of Somerset. It could not be for him, this strange summons.

      The rustle of a woman’s soft draperies broke in upon his reverie. He turned around with his usual morning greeting upon his lips. If country life had agreed with Peter Ruff, it had transformed his wife. Her cheeks were no longer pale; the extreme slimness of her figure was no longer apparent. She was just a little more matronly, perhaps, but without doubt a most beautiful woman. She came smiling across the room—a dream of white muslin and pink ribbons.

      “Another forage bill, my dear Peter?” she demanded, passing her arm through his. “Put it away and admire my new morning gown. It came straight from Paris, and you will have to pay a great deal of money for it.”

      He pulled himself together—he had no secrets from his wife.

      “Listen,” he said, and read aloud:

      “RUE DE ST. QUINTAINE.

       PARIS.

       “DEAR Mr. RUFF, It is a long time since we had the pleasure of a visit from you. It is the desire of Madame that you should join our circle here on Thursday evening next at ten o’clock.— SOGRANGE.”

      Violet was a little perplexed. She failed, somehow, to recognize the sinister note underlying those few sentences, “It sounds friendly enough,” she remarked. “You are not obliged to go, of course.”

      Peter Ruff smiled grimly.

      “Yes, it sounds all right,” he admitted.

      “They won’t expect you to take any notice of it, surely?” she continued. “When you bought this place, Peter, and left your London offices, you gave them definitely to understand that you had retired into private life, that all these things were finished with you.”

      “There are some things,” Peter Ruff said, slowly, “which are never finished.”

      “But you resigned,” she reminded him. “I remember your letter distinctly.”

      “From the Double-Four,” he answered, “no resignation is recognized save death. I did what I could and they accepted my explanations, gracefully and without comment. Now that the time has come, however, when they think they need my help, you see they do not hesitate to claim it.”

      “You